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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29408178">copper and iron and salt</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingofdots/pseuds/darlingofdots'>darlingofdots</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood, Canon-Typical Gore, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/F, Ianthe takes advantage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:48:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>934</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29408178</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingofdots/pseuds/darlingofdots</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>If Ianthe Tridentarius had knelt beside you then...</p>
<p>Set at the end of chapter 24 of Harrow the Ninth.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harrowhark Nonagesimus/Ianthe Tridentarius</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>copper and iron and salt</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>“Harrow?” Ianthe ventured, from somewhere near the door. Then she obviously stopped and saw you naked, bloodied, flayed in your own anguish, with soapsuds still on your feet. You hallucinated that you could smell her: sweat, musk, vetiver.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>You saw your probable future clearly. You had not until that point understood the danger.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>If Ianthe Tridentarius knelt beside you then, no matter with what sugary contempt or filigreed Third condescension, you would press your diminished bloody terror into her; you would creep naked into her lap, shamelessly, and weep. You would crawl like a worm to whatever clinging scrap of solace she would give you. all your slithering, degraded desperation for condolence you would give to your sister Lyctor with a brazen thirst you would never come back from. She would be your end, as surely as the hammer to the oxygen-sealant machine of your childhood. You would have reached for her with the mindless desire of an infectious disease. You would have whored yourself to her as necrosis to a wound.</em>
</p>
<p>Ianthe Tridentarius knelt beside you on the cool black tiles, wet with your watered-down blood that soaked into the shining confection of her skirts. “Oh <em>Harry</em>,” she breathed, wiping your dripping hair from your forehead, and you felt the spark of thalergy as she knitted your mangled mandible back together, restored the ruins of your maxilla. It hurt. You whimpered. You lay prone under her hands, dazed and despairing, nearly too dead to sew yourself back up.</p>
<p>You gasped, when she kissed you. <em>Kiss </em>was perhaps not the right word; she leaned in close and pressed her open mouth to your mouth and licked the blood from your lips, and did not withdraw when you whimpered. It was a pathetic sound, that of a wounded and frightened animal, and Ianthe gathered you to her and held your naked body in her arms, your head against her shoulder, her living hand in your hair, as she made soothing sounds and rocked you gently in her lap while you cried.</p>
<p>When you were done, and whole again but for the irreparable damage to your sagacity, she placed two fingers underneath your chin and raised your face to hers. “Poor Harrowhark,” she crooned, her blue eyes dark. “You’re lucky I found you.”</p>
<p>It was your own meat that betrayed you, desperate and crazed. You brushed your lips over hers and tasted your own blood on her, the heavy metallic tang of copper and iron. You felt her smile, saw the glint in her eyes, but you did not let go. Her tongue teased at the seam of your lips and you opened yourself to her, allowed her entry to yourself in a way you could never rescind, and moaned at the slide of her tongue against yours. She sought out the fresh wounds in your gums, the seeping gaps between your molars where the Saint of Duty had knocked the teeth from your jaw, and you hissed at the shock of pain as she pressed against the raw nerves there.</p>
<p> “Alright,” she drawled, when she separated from you with a disgusting wet sound. “Let’s take this elsewhere.”</p>
<p>You followed her to your bed like a dutiful child, like an animal to the slaughterhouse. She laid you out like a feast for her eyes only, soap and blood drying in flakes on your skin, and she kissed your newly-healed jaw, your temples, your lips; bit your earlobe hard enough you almost cried out — whatever pitiful remnants of pride you still possessed were all that stood between you and complete and utter humiliation — and sucked splotches of purple bruises into the delicate skin of your throat, scraped her sharp teeth down the line where your carotid artery frantically throbbed.</p>
<p>It was not cold in your room, but you shivered regardless. You did not have the energy left to be self-conscious, or to try and cover your appalling nakedness.The fingers of Ianthe’s left hand trailed along the sharp relief of your collarbone, pressing for a moment into the hollow at the base of your throat so you gasped and choked, then travelled further downward in the valley between your breasts, such as they were, and the fading pink line of where Ortus had sliced you open, and then she dipped her fingers between your legs and smothered your sob with her lips. She pressed and rubbed and teased you into silence, then submission, then despair; you arched your back, unable to suppress the base and monstrous reaction of your meat to her hand against you, her fingers pushing in and up and deep, again and again until you sobbed in earnest. Her breath was ragged in your ears, her face pressed into the pillow beside you as she reached down with her right hand and shoved her skirts aside to grind wildly against it, panting in time with her fingers inside you.</p>
<p>The tension at your core coiled tighter and tighter, threatening to tear you to pieces, until at last there was nowhere left to go but through, and your climax tore a cry from your burning throat. You shoved Ianthe’s hand away, shaking, and watched spellbound as she brought herself, shuddering, to completion. You lay next to her on your back, raw and blistered, until she slid from your bed with a sigh, shook out her skirts, and left you to your terror.</p>
<p>Aloud, you said through swollen lips: “The Saint of Duty must die.”</p>
<p>Next to you on the bed, where the sheets were still warm from where Ianthe had lain, the Body said, “Yes.”</p>
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